Our good friend bandleader Richard I. “Swingin’ Dick” Long gave us a call shortly after his gala extravaganza in River City CA. A rousing and wonderful time was had by all well into the wee hours of the morning. Dick loved the reception at River City, and is extremely grateful towards the city for hosting the big event.
But Dick was vexed. And needed our advice. Seems the shower flow wasn’t that good in the hotel he was in, and after he had installed a new shower head in his house (replacing an ancient one), it didn’t seem to have very good flow either–kinda mimicking the one at the hotel. And it seems he’s gotta flush more too in the newer ‘thrones’ he’s installed.
Dick was wondering what’s up.
One of the more satisfying things we do on a new shower head installation is to remove the flow restrictor–this usually sits fairly far down in the piece that connects to the pipe and can usually be popped out with a screwdriver. If it’s ‘hard wired,’ it can be drilled out. To get that nice warm full flow in the shower.
Believe it or not, there are no less than TWO major Federal agencies tasked with dictating all shower head flow rates for every new showerhead manufactured since 1994. Strangely enough the Department of Energy (DOE) is responsible for mandating that ANY new showerhead must not exceed 2.5 Gallons Per Minute of flow rate. Not to be outdone, the EPA gets into the act by further expanding on this and issuing a “WaterSense” certification for showerheads using 2.0 GPM or less.
I guess it never occurred to them that competing fixture companies could do exactly the same thing as a selling point giving a consumer a choice of what kind of shower he or she wanted. At far less cost than in writing a government mandate.
The EPA takes a more active role in regulating toilets; the maximum water per flush (since 1994) has been capped by law at 1.6 gallons per flush with 1.28 to get ‘WaterSense’ certification. We’re sure that millions of taxpayer dollars were involved both by EPA and DOE in testing, writing, editing, re-writing, and publishing the volumes of reports and laws that unelected bureaucracies do. And there are millions of internal emails bouncing around these entities both within and between EPA and DOE drilling down into the nuances of toilets and shower heads. All paid for with YOUR money and intruding into YOUR life. As if you’re not smart enough to get a showerhead or toilet that works for YOUR particular application from a multitude of sources.
Not to mention the tonne of crap (pun intended) regarding the nuances of toilet water usage on EPA’s website maintained on your dime. For something you really neither want nor need. The private sector has been giving choices for shower heads and toilets for years–including the air or pressure flush variety for those wanting to conserve water.
Not surprisingly, none of this works or worked. People simply had to flush several times (using more water than an old style one that worked better). And who could forget that these mandated ‘low flow’ thrones clogged up San Francisco’s sewer system not that long ago because there wasn’t enough water getting through thanks to the ‘low flow’ toilets. And people simply spent longer in the shower (or popped out the restrictors like us).
ALL of this ignores the fact in many places, people use tens of thousands of gallons of water with sprinkler systems to irrigate their individual lawns. Or fill pools. So any mandate on showers gets completely lost in the noise; being perhaps less than 1 percent of the volume of water used for irrigation. The ‘mandate’ is worse than useless.
Not to mention in Amador county alone (Amador Water Agency) 20,000 gallons of water is automatically released from a roadside device every morning at 02:30 to maintain EPA dictated chlorine levels in the oversized line. That’s ONE line of ONE water agency in ONE county; we suspect there are many more. And that’s alot of showers.
You really can’t ‘waste’ water; the water returns to the environment after being used (and unless you get water from a very deep well YOU’RE probably drinking ‘recycled’ water–purified by nature and her filtration and the evaporation/precipitation cycle. Not to mention that anytime we burn hydrocarbons, we generate fresh, clean water (might wanna tell that to your Marxist ‘climate change’ zealot). You CAN waste the energy required to bring you the water, and you can move it from where it’s useful to where it’s hard to get to. How much water you ‘should’ consume depends wholly on your environment and what’s available. If you NEED to conserve water, get a low flow showerhead. If water’s plentiful and there’s plenty of precipitation, use a high flow showerhead (by removing the flow restrictor). Same as for a toilet; if you’re in an arid climate with little water available, consider one of the air-pressure assist thrones. But USE what you need to.
One size doesn’t fit all. And it’s extremely counterproductive for a government to mandate this as well as being absurd. Entities end up using more water to work around the mandate. We suspect the same thing is happening with dishwashers and washing machines–causing more harm than good by taking more energy and time to wash twice instead of once.
We would urge DOGE to grab their axe and get going–and this is a great place to start with the EPA and DOE (in fact BOTH the DOEs). Not only do the EPA and DOE directly waste your money by doing junk like this, but also waste YOUR time in cleaning up after them for the mess they made of good consumer products. The consumer market is great at providing choices for these–and other–goods which fit a consumer’s personal situation. You can’t take the soviet approach by looking in from the outside telling others what they ‘need’ or ‘should’ have.
We knew you’d probably be wondering about Dick. Well, good old Dick popped out his flow restrictors and he’s a happy Dick in the shower !
And if you want to see more information about the zany antics and episodes of “Swingin’ Dick” and his dance band go check out HIS website:
Diatomaceous-Johnson 